Chapter 37
The bounty hunters had been right; they hadn't exaggerated Aurora’s temperament in the slightest. At only twelve months old, Aurora possessed a fierce, primal sense of autonomy. She wasn't just a passive victim; she was fighting tooth and nail—quite literally—against her captors.
When Aurora finally drifted awake from her mid-afternoon nap, the world was wrong. The air didn't smell like home, and the shadows on the ceiling were unfamiliar. When the babysitter reached into the crib, expecting a sleepy, compliant infant, Aurora didn’t lift her arms. There was no "up" gesture, no sleepy smile. Instead, she inhaled sharply and unleashed an ear-piercing, jagged scream—a vocal siren designed by evolution to signal a life-threatening emergency.
When the screaming failed to push the
